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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23939650">stone and spice</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson'>objectlesson</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>GLOW (TV 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cultural Differences, F/F, First Time, Internalized Homophobia, Romance, Witchcraft, brown lesbians!!!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 23:47:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,199</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23939650</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>So you dance with Arthie like she’s Debbie Reynolds and you’re Gene Kelley and this is Singin’ in the Rain and it doesn't matter you’re both brown and both girls. It doesn’t matter you have nothing but a few hundred bucks, a dirty hotel room, some worn out texts books and a bottle of Tajin  between the two of you.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Arthie Premkumar/Yolanda Rivas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>stone and spice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote this like over  a year ago, but have held off on posting until now. I'm not sure why? possibly because when I wrote this where was no official arthie/yolanda tag and it made me really mad because they're a canon pairing and super important to me as a Latina lesbian and I was hurt, haha.  anyway, things have changed enough I guess its time to release this fic into the world &lt;3 I hope someone enjoys. there should be more fic about these girls.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>—-</p><p>You carry a bottle of Tajin  with you wherever you go. </p><p>It’s in your purse alongside your bundle of sage, your amethyst crystals, your vials of peppermint and lavender oil for headaches. Your brothers call you <em>bruja </em>but you just shake salt at them, blow smoke and they run away shrieking, like they want nothing to do with your magic. </p><p>Which, whatever. It’s not like your family knows anything of your real life. Not the stripping, not the wrestling, not the way you live to have your head crushed between a woman’s thighs, tongue lashing in that sweet, dark place up inside her. It’s fine they think you’re a witch, that they laugh at everything you do so that they don't have to fear it. You show up for parties and grill the carne asada alongside your papaand it never comes up, why you don’t bring boyfriends home at Christmas. </p><p>—-</p><p>The gorgeous ladies of wrestling aren't <em>all</em> white, but they’re <em>mostly</em> white. Or at least that’s what it feels like. You have Debbie and Ruth and their tense, unspoken suburban gay thing brewing amidst silence, plus the wolf-girl getting her weird all over everything, and that makes the whole set up feel impossibly, irrevocably white. </p><p>It starts as a prank, putting Tajin all over their food. A reminder that you’re new but you don’t put up with shit, that there’s always going to be a burn. A painful thorn in their side reminding them that throwing each other around on a mat in leotards means something different to you, a lesbian, than it does to them. </p><p>So, Tajin  goes in Melrose’s yogurt. </p><p>Tajin  goes on Debbie’s potato salad. </p><p>Tajin  on Ruth’s cubed cantaloupe.</p><p>Tajin  on the twins’ (you haven’t bothered to learn their names and you don’t intend to) matching strawberry smoothies. (the protein kind, in a can.) </p><p>Tajin  on Arthie’s rice and…whatever she has with her rice. Something with lentils. </p><p>Everyone puckers up and shrieks and has to chug from their water bottles, which is absurd because you only put on things it <em>actually tastes good on. ‘</em>Ugh,” Melrose says, making a face and drooling water all over her exercise mat. “M’gonna vom.” </p><p>“Oh come on,” You snap, shaking the container at her, spilling red powder and salt crystals all over the space between your Nikes. “It’s not &lt;<em>that</em> bad. Add a little kick to your life, Smell-Rose.” </p><p>She gags. </p><p>“It’s not even that spicy,” you tell her. </p><p>“Speak for yourself,” Debbie snaps, dumping her potatoes out into the trash can. They make a gross, satisfying sound, and you think about how much you hate Mayonnaise. In food and in people. </p><p>“I couldn’t even tell it was there,” Arthie says, walking into your circle of mats holding her Tupperware, spooning mouthfuls of her food easily. </p><p>The rest of the girls are still spitting and complaining. And then there’s Arthie, who you haven't quite figured out yet. “You like?” you ask her, waggling your eyebrows because the only way you’d found to flap the unflappable is to flirt with her relentlessly. It started out as a joke and now you make yourself sort of dizzy and tight-stomached whenever you talk to her. It’s annoying because she’s your roommate. Your straight roommate. </p><p>“Dunno if <em>like</em> is the word,” she says nonchalantly, chewing and swallowing easily, dark eyes rolling skyward as if in contemplation. “More like…it adds a bit of something? Not really all that spicy…more. Citrus? Is there lime?” she asks, gaze falling back on you and <em>fuck, </em>you wish it didn’t twist up in your gut like that. You thought you were done having stupid, confusing, fruitless crushes on girls who let you touch them but only for an audience. </p><p>“Ding ding ding,” you say coyly, because there’s no other way to talk to her, or any of them when they're all on guard around you like you might strike when they’re not looking. “Lime and chile. It’s for fruit, or you know. Yoplait,” you add, shooting a judgmental look at Melrose, who is still streaming from the eyes. </p><p>“Huh,” Arthie says, scraping her Tupperware clean. “I don’t hate it. Might be open to try it again.” </p><p>And you don’t think about all the other things that might apply to. </p><p>—-</p><p>You up the Tajin  amounts, if only so you can see how much of it Arthie can take before she decides it’s gross. You don't think the spice is an issue for her (you can smell her food sometimes when she heats it up in your room for dinner, and it makes your eyes water, your throat burn,) but that much chile and lime can’t actually compliment the flavors of what she’s eating. You think she’s putting up a front when she smiles and scarfs it up, offering you scraps like “is that all you've got?” or “Hm, like Sprite meets Taco Bell.” </p><p>She infuriates you, but only because she’s the most real thing here, in the Valley, on Glow. Wrestling is fake and you hate ignoring who you really are just just so these white bitches can stomach you tossing them onto their backs for the camera. It feels fake. It is fake. At least the way Arthie is fake, is real. </p><p>—-</p><p>You light sage in your room, set it on the plastic ashtray and make a ring of crystals around it. Rose quartz at the top so all your feelings will drain out, clear quartz at the bottom so it can <em>catch</em> all those fucking feelings and protect you from them. </p><p><em>“ </em>No more fucking crushes on fucking straight girls,” you tell the haze of smoke.It twists around the room in billows and when Arthie comes back from the pool she’s rubbing her shoulder, face screwed up in a grimace of pain. </p><p>“What, you dive too hard?” you ask her warily. “Hit the bottom?” </p><p>“No, just. You know. The whole, my-body-feels-like-it’s-been-hit-with-a-truck-thing wrestling does to you? I think it gets <em>worse</em> on our off days. Like my adrenaline dies or something and I’m left with all the broken muscles,” she gripes, sitting down on her bed dramatically, ponytail bouncing. </p><p>You forget whatever spell you were trying to do. “Come over here <em>chica,” </em>you say, pretending to be exasperated, hands in the air. “Lemme put an elbow in that fucked up back of yours.” </p><p>When she’s face down in your bed, voice muffled by bunched hotel linen, she says, “Yolanda? When did you know you were…you know.” </p><p>“I don’t know,” you snap, even though you do. Your elbow slips off of her shoulder, because you lose focus of everything around you. “When I knew I was a big dyke?” You say, because that's all you can say, when posed with a question like that. She finds you crass and mannish and disgusting, so you're gonna own that. You're gonna shove it back in her face.</p><p>“Well,” she says, turning her head so she’s not pressed into the sheets anymore. “I wasn’t going to say <em>that</em>, but yeah. When you knew you were a lesbian.” </p><p>“When I wanted to fuck my best friend,” you say, because you always resort to harsh language when you’re backed into this corner. It’s a defense mechanism, or maybe an attack. You’re daring straight women to find you so repulsive they stop digging in your business, at the same time you’re daring them to to not make a fool of themselves, to say the right thing, for once. “I was eleven,” you add, because you were, and it always fucks with people to know gay kids had dirty schoolyard crushes, too. Just like they did.  </p><p>“I wanted to kiss my best friend,” Arthie says, slowly, without pulling away from your elbow, which is back to digging into her, pinning her there, so she has no choice but to talk about this. “I thought it was normal. We’d practice on each other, in middle school. Kissing and stuff. She got a boyfriend eventually,  and I never did. I kept…<i><em>keep</em> waiting for that to change, you know, to want to kiss a guy the way I wanted to kiss her. Seems like if I wait enough, it will happen, you know? But maybe not.” </i></p><p>
  <i></i>
</p><p>
  <i></i>
</p><p>You’ve softened. Your pressure, your face. The clench to your jaw is gone and it’s not aching anymore, and so much of you wants to smooth gentle hands down the slope of her narrow back, but instead you pull away from her completely. “Maybe not,” you say, gently. “It didn’t, for me. Guys just…they don't do shit for me, you know? But women? God. That feeling never went away.” </p><p>You let it hang in the air between them, that confession. Like fruit flies drifting around something too ripe and sweet. </p><p>“Hm,” she says, brows furrowed, mouth pursed. You imagine kissing her, how she might taste like lime and chile, you’ve been feeding it to her for so many days. “Guess I have a lot to think about.” </p><p>“Hey,” you say, standing, putting your sage out in the ash tray and grabbing your purse where you keep your Tajin . “Lemme show you how this is <em>supposed </em>to taste. It’s for fruit, actually. Like a mango,” you explain, bending over so you can rifle through the mini-fridge. There’s beer and some take out left overs in there, and hidden, tucked in the back, a half of a mango in a ziplock bag. It’s not the freshest in the world, but it’ll do. You’ve charmed girls with less. “Want to try?” you ask with your tongue pressed into your cheek, flirting over the top because that’s always easier than pretending there’s <i><em>not</em> a hidden meaning, a double entendre. It’s a language you’re forced to speak, when you live half out of the shadows and are being paid to grab girls around the waist like it’s nothing, when its not. </i></p><p>
  <i></i>
</p><p>
  <i></i>
</p><p>“I do,” she says, sitting up and grinning. Your stomach swoops. “Show me.” </p><p>—-</p><p>You dance around each other for the next few weeks. Or maybe, its not a dance. It’s a wrestling match. You fake it and fall, over and over again. Disguise real pain with drama, pantomiming so no one knows what you’re really going through. Every second Arthie’s skin is under your hands you feel dirty, but not as much as you feel clean. Purified, like a fire effigy. </p><p>You want a lot of things. You want to show her how good it can be, how much <em>better</em> is is when a girl is making you come. You want to pull her hair, to lie between her thighs, press her into the floor, kiss her clavicles. You want to see Arthie, forever composed, come undone under you. </p><p>Instead you fake-hurt her. Push her up against the ropes. Get her in a choke-hold until you’re both giggling and Sam is giving you his all-pupil coke-addled stink-eye. Drown in her sweat, twist up in her limbs.</p><p>It should be easier than talking about whatever is brewing unspoken between you. But you're not actually sure it is. </p><p>—-</p><p>She sneaks off some evening and you don’t know where she’s going. You tell yourself a lot of things, write a lot of comforting, albeit unlikely narratives. </p><p>But you know beneath all your sage smoke and self assurance, that as much as Arthie might actually like girls, she’s going to keep trying to fit some mold her family expects of her. Some mold she expects for herself. It’s why you haven’t talked about it since that night, why you’re always brushing past her in the evenings when you both need to shower but neither of you would ever suggest saving water and taking it together. </p><p>You know when she’s not there that she’s probably seeing a boy. Some last minute desperate jab at normalcy, some friend of her sister’s, some recommendation of her mother’s. A nice Indian boy, with money and a house that’s not a hotel, a complete package with things you could never offer her. </p><p>You lie in the dark and stare at the ceiling, trying hard not to think about this boy you will never be. </p><p>When Arthie comes back, she’s winded and bright-eyed and has a bag of groceries with her from a Ranch Market. “I got fruit,” she blurts, dumping a whole entire papaya on your bed. “Thought we could have a Tajin party.” </p><p>“Yeah?” you ask, eying her suspiciously, looking for hickeys on her brown, slender neck, even as you feel your guard crumbling as it always eventually does in her presence. “What else you got? A single papaya isn’t a party.” </p><p>There are mangos, a watermelon, two fresh limes. She grins at you like she’s expecting something as they tumble onto the bedspread like something from a commercial for the tropics, colorful skins shiny like the mess of dirty leotards accumulating in the space between your beds. You end up smiling back at her, head cocked.  She makes you stupidly, childishly happy. She makes you forget to defend yourself. She makes you act like you’ve never been fucked over by a girl who wanted a taste. </p><p>“Come on,” she whines, doing a dance. “I’ve got a terrible sweet tooth.” </p><p>And it’s not flirting, not exactly, but you’re weak. So you’ll take it. “Ok,” you agree, falling apart. “Let’s cut those up.” </p><p>—-</p><p>The last few episodes aren’t just TV, they’re an experiment. For everyone this time, not just the girls wrestling you, wondering what it means if they like your hands on their throat. Sam keeps saying yes to Ruth and throwing his hands up in the air and doing lines where everyone can see him instead of locking himself in the office and it feels like anything can happen. Like there are no rules. </p><p>So you dance with Arthie like she’s Debbie Reynolds and you’re Gene Kelley and this is <em>Singin’ in the Rain</em> and it doesn't matter you’re both brown and both girls. It doesn’t matter you have nothing but a few hundred bucks, a dirty hotel room, some worn out texts books and a bottle of Tajin  between the two of you. </p><p>Arthie is close and warm even in between takes, and you can feel her heartbeat in her wrists when you smooth your fingers down them, or fluttering between tendons in her neck when you dip her and your lips are centimeters away from her pulse. </p><p>You want to kiss her. You want to lick up her sweat. You want to be the leading man in a movie musical, where you get the the girl and there’s no blood, no regret, no double suicide at the end of it. Like, why don't you get a fucking happy ending? Why is every gay love-story a struggle? LA is pockmarked in your exes, one at every club, and for the first time in your memory, you want to be able to get out from under the smother of it all. Run away with Arthie, give her something good. A sunset to ride into, a billowy smoke background of celluloid flair, where everything is timed perfectly and you have your happily ever after. </p><p>It’s just a dream sequence, though. You know this.</p><p>—-</p><p><em>She</em> kisses <em>you. </em>Under the burn of the stage lights, hair big with the smell of ozone, makeup melting under the clutch of your palms, layers of taffeta so thick it obstructs your movement. </p><p><em>She</em> kisses <em>you. </em></p><p>You need to remember this, months from how when you might be wondering if it happened at all, if you’re crazy. When she’s gone and she’s lied about you and all you have left are these hair-spray memories, the flash of cameras and the stink of one hundred other girls’ sweat.</p><p>It’s not your idea. It’s not something you forced or even willed into existence. Arthie kisses <em>you. </em>Her lips are warm and salty and her mouth stays closed but it’s the sort of kiss that <em>counts. </em>She’s kissing you because she wants to, and you can <em>tell </em>by the way she holds on, the way she turns her head, the way her brow is furrowed in determination as she pitches her weight  like she can’t fucking stop herself. Like she's been thinking of it as long as you have. </p><p>Time freezes, and your skin is so suddenly alive. Burning up against her as she twists in your arms. Everyone is watching, but you <em>know</em> it’s not for them, for the camera. It’s for her.</p><p>It lasts seconds but with the way the world falls away around you, like film on a cutting room floor, it feels like so, so much longer. When she pulls away, you both smile, fierce and brilliant and lit up inside. She looks as terrified as she looks pleased with herself. </p><p><em>She</em> kisses <em>you. </em>You cannot forget that, no matter what happens. </p><p>She kisses you, and maybe she’ll kiss you again.</p><p>—-</p><p>Weeks pass and some things change. But other things (things you wish would) don’t. Miraculously, Arthie <em>is </em>treating you differently and you’ve actually <em>spoken </em>about whatever is brewing between you without giving it a name, which is more than you let yourself expect. It’s said and unsaid, both real and not. You feel like you’re in a holding pattern, the cart of a rickety fair roller-coaster forever tick-ticking up an endless hill, approaching a precipice. </p><p>Arthie asks to keep living with you. She cuddles you at night. She’s even kissed you a few more times, when you’re tangled up in the same bed together watching trash television getting sleepy before lights out. Just before she gets up to brush her teeth, she’ll press her lips to yours, quick and fleeting like she's daring herself to. </p><p>She always bounces away teasingly, grinning big as she and tucks herself into her <em>own</em> bed, and it’s confusing, but you’re mostly just glad she’s not pretending it never happened at all. That you get to have her so close, arms looped around her waist, face pressed into her hair while you both giggle at telenovelas or late night soft-core. </p><p>Sometimes you catch her looking at you when you’re changing, and when you stick your tongue out or wink she blushes but doesn’t look away. Just lets her eyes get half-lidded and heavy, like she <em>knows</em> you’re both building up to something, like she <em>knows</em> it’s a matter of time and she’s not scared anymore, to see where this takes her. </p><p>So, she’s not your girlfriend. You’re not dating. You’re not even fucking. </p><p>But, she wants to live with you. She’s come to watch you dance. She lays her head on your shoulder and nods off at night, and when she wakes up she blinks all cute and slow and confused, but she doesn’t act like she was expecting someone different when she realizes she’s half in your lap. She just gets that coy look, her tongue pressed to her cheek, like she's waiting for something. </p><p>The thing is, you think you love her. So you’ll be patient. You’ll wait too. </p><p>—-</p><p>Your room in Vegas has a weird energy in it when you get there. Something sad and unsettled, like the last occupant was someone desperate, someone broken. An affair, a homemaker, a gambler, a whore. You never know, with Vegas.You’re not sure of the whole story but the fragments still linger, so as soon as you dump your suitcases onto the bed you immediately get out some salt and sage and a little copper burning bowl your Abuela gave you as a going away present. </p><p>“What’s that?” Arthie asks even though it’s not the first time she’s seen your stuff. You light the sage and smudge the room, holding a labradorite crystal in your left hand to protect yourself. Once you've finished and the cherry of it has stopped glowing, you bury the crystal in your salt jar to clean it, and Arthie watches with wide, curious eyes, as she always does. This is the first time she’s asked a concrete question about it instead of just quietly observing, so you feel like you owe her an honest answer. Plus, you shouldn’t be hiding things from the girl you want to be your girlfriend. </p><p>“Cleansing ritual,” you tell her, waving the smoke remnants with your hand. “Ever walk into a place and it feels…wrong? Off? Or maybe just dirty, like someone left something rotten in there and its stinking up the place?”</p><p>“Yeah, like an energy thing?” she asks, surprising you. “M’Indian, remember? We’re superstitious as fuck. My mom used to spit out the window whenever she gossiped, something about warding off eavesdroppers? Anyway, I get it. Plus, the smoke smells good. What’s with the rock?” </p><p>You sit on the bed an rifle through your luggage to bring out your drawstring pouch,  contents clinking together comfortingly. “Crystals,” you explain. “They have certain energies, too. Like, the one I was just using? It’s a protector. Sometimes when you’re clearing bad energy it can latch onto you, Labrodorite keeps you safe. And here’s green aventurine, for confidence…I hold it before I dance or wrestle, sometimes. Grounds you. And here’s Aquamarine to cool you off, when you’re feeling pissed about something, and here, this one, rose quartz for love—”</p><p>“The pink one?” she asks, reaching out and laying the tip of her finger on to your smallest bit of tumbled rose quartz. It glints under her dark skin and chipped deep purple polish, and she has the slimmest, most lovely fingers. You know, because you’ve thought about them a lot. Twined yours between them and thumbed across her hand, wondering how much longer you can stand not having her in some way that’s real, that quenches this horrible thirst inside you.  </p><p>“Yeah, the pink one. Love and passion and all that,” you tell her, shrugging. </p><p>She takes it in her palm, and looks you dead in the eye. “I’m borrowing it, is that ok?” </p><p>You smile hard and reflexive, so big it hurts.  “Of course it’s ok.You doing a love spell or what?” you ask her, waggling your brows. Forever deflecting.</p><p>“Something like that,” she says quietly, smiling the smallest smile. </p><p>That night she tucks it under her pillow before she turns out the light, and your eyes burn with a hot, unexpected rush of tears. You wipe them away and will them to nonexistence, and it takes you a long time before you actually sleep, the liminal space before it plagues with haunting images of her dark, slender fingers curling around the long, raw rose-quartz shard you have at home, pink an fractal and sharp. </p><p>—-</p><p>The strip is all lights, lights and the jingle of slot machines and dark smoky bars with dancers like you. Long legged strippers with oiled skin and fake tits, doing the same tired routines with so much grace and effortlessness you can hardly believe they’re awake at all. You love women and remember what it was like, so in the hours you have between practices, you wander into topless bars and slip five dollar bills into their garters. </p><p>Arthie comes with you one time, and you expect it to be some fun, flirtatious jaunt where you can grill her about the sort of girl she finds attractive, but she’s quiet and sulky the whole time, and you wonder what she’s thinking about, where you misstepped. It’s not until you’ve had two Mojitos on a mostly empty stomach and the room is spinning around you that you finally ask her, “Jesus, Arthie. Did I do something to freak you out? Why’ve you been pouting all day? Thought the sight of some tits didn’t bother you.” </p><p>She purses her lips around the <em>straw</em> she has in her Martini. (Arthie drinks martinis with straws, which shouldn't be cute but most definitely is<em>).  “</em>I’m not uncomfortable <em>or</em> pouting,” she says, choosing not to address the bit about tits. “I’m just thinking. Worrying, I guess.” </p><p>“Yeah, about <em>what</em>?” you snap, because you don’t <em>like</em> to play games, you’re dizzy and you’re tired of all the ways she keeps you guessing, takes your crystals and kisses you with lips so soft and maddening but never, ever with tongue. </p><p>“You…just. I don't expect you to wait around for me, or anything,” she blurts, and you’re shocked by the candor, the black flash of her eyes. You stare and stare, trying to make sense of it, and she stares back with her eyes wet and wide before she launches into it. “I mean, if you want to go to strip clubs and get lap dances and I don’t know, find <em>a real girlfriend, </em>one that knows what she’s doing? That’s fine. I’d be fucking sad, and hurt, but I wouldn’t blame you. You’ve got your shit together and I’m a baby, so. It is what it is. I’m not expecting you to wait around and entertain my dumb crush.” </p><p>She finishes and in seconds she’s slurping the remnants of her drink through the straw, coughing violently on the bitter dredges before slapping the bar asking for another. You try and process all that she’s said, but the only thing repeating in your head is <em>I’ll be fucking sad, and hurt. </em>You don’t want to hurt her. You don’t want to make her sad. </p><p>You try hard to soften your voice as you tell her, “I don’t want some dancer in Vegas for a girlfriend Arthie, Jesus,” You wave your hand in the air, like you could shape words from the eerie, purple-glow in this bar. “I want <em>you</em> to be my girlfriend. Obviously. I thought you knew that. I’m just…I’m trying not to <em>push</em> you to hard, you know? Trying not yo scare you away.” </p><p>A stunned, messy laugh bubbles up out of her, and it’s not what you were expecting. Your heart hurts and you’re still reeling from the astounding <em>suddenness </em>of these confessions and before you can  get your bearings and laugh it off with her, she's crying, instead. Wiping her eyes with her thumbs, staring at the ceiling with a little line through her brow and you want to badly to smooth it away with your fingers, your lips. “I. I’m not some <em>tourist, </em>I’m not scared. Or I <em>am</em>, but only that I won’t be good enough at this for you to want to keep me, or something. I’ve never been with a girl, or dated a girl, or fucked a girl,” she blurts, voice slurring on the word <em>fuck</em> and she might be drunker than you thought she was, drunker than you are, anyway. “I might be awful at it,” she adds, still yelling about lesbian sex in this topless bar in the middle of the goddamned afternoon. “And I don’t want to disappoint you. I keep…I keep <em>telling</em> you what I want, that I want to live together, that I want. I don't know. To be close to you.” She’s almost shouting now, and you want to cup her cheeks, to quiet her down, to keep the bartender and the men in their ugly suits whistling at the dancers from hearing a single precious word she has to say. “To <em>kiss</em> you, and everything else,” she continues. “But I’m a mess, and you’re just…you want keep that distance, and I get that. I’m probably not like your other girlfriends. I probably seem like an idiot.” </p><p>Then, she sags in defeat, and reaches for her next martini. </p><p>You stop her. </p><p>“Come here,” you say gently, opening your arms, motioning for her to fill the vacancy between them.  She hesitates, wavering like a flame exposed to an exhalation and still, you beckon. “No, I know. You’re <em>not like</em> my other girlfriends, and its been confusing for me but m’not <em>mad, </em>babygirl. You’re not an idiot. Come here.” </p><p>Finally, she relents, sniffling, and falls into your chest. You wrap your arms around her and together you stay like that, swaying messily, the bar still bustling around you like another universe, one you’re only in peripheral contact with. Everything but her skin against yours seems far away. “Hey, we’re going to talk about this, but when we’re back in our room and there’s aren't creepy guys everywhere, ok?” you say. </p><p>She nods against you, inhaling raggedly. You know you’re in love because the fact you want her like this, tear-stricken and messy and scared, means you’re not running from things the second they get real, which is more or less you track record. Strike before you get poisoned. Leave before you get left. Stab before you’re bleeding. . But here, with Arthie, you’re wrist deep in messiness, and you don’t even <em>care. </em>“For the record,” you tell her. “You’ve got it all wrong.” </p><p>“What do I have wrong?” she grumbles, pulling away and wiping her nose. You leave some crumpled singles on the bar and loop your arm around her narrow lower back, leading her away. There are stares burning into your body, and you’re used to them, know how to act when you’ve drawn that sort of attention, but Arthie doesn’t. She stumbles out onto the strip after you, and the hot air blasts sudden and gritty in your faces like a sandstorm. You just want to get her home. </p><p>“You’re wrong about me wanting distance. I just want to be close to you, too.I want to make you my girl. What stops me is worrying it’s too much for you, being with someone like me,” you admit, letting it hang in the space between you, letting your eyes linger on her lips as she wets them with her tongue. “I thought you had one foot out the door. So I was hanging back, so I didn’t send you running.” </p><p>“Ok,” she says, after awhile, and you walk back to the hotel in silence, arms linked, hips bumping together on the odd, fleeting step. “I am your girl,” she says at some point, when she’s sobered up a bit in the heat. “I have been for awhile.” </p><p>And you can’t stop your heart from leaping, your stomach from plummeting. </p><p>—-</p><p>She excuses herself to the shower and you brush your teeth, sick of the taste of rum. You listen to the water running and think of her with it cascading down her narrow shoulders. </p><p>It’s so fucking hard, loving women the way you do. </p><p>You dance with them naked, throw them on their backs for a living but somehow, you’re supposed to ignore the fact you fuck them in your private life. That all any of your co-workers are ever thinking about when they strip with you or wrestle with you is that you’re <em>different</em> from them. It’s hard not to feel like some dirty predator even when you’re not. It’s hard not to feel like a threat, even when you’re not. It’s especially hard when there’s someone like Arthie, a girl you <em>do</em> want. Everything gets muddied. </p><p>It’s an endless battle of space and proximity, the fear of getting too close and burning her up in your hunger. You're tired of feeling guilty. Of feeling filthy.  Of failing to notice when a girl actually <em>does</em> want you because you’ve so effectively convinced yourself she never could. None of this is your fault. </p><p>She steps out while you're still in front of the sink brushing your teeth, and you jump because she’s not wearing a towel, she’s just standing there dripping, skin glistening like mahogany beaded in honey. Your mouth goes dry and she steps closer, carding a nervous hand through her dark wet hair “this is what I want, in case I haven't been clear,” she says evenly, eyes dropping to the floor as the smooths her palms down her breasts, which are small but round, nipples puffy in this way you can imagine so vividly under your tongue. “It’s ok if it’s not what you want. Tell me to put a towel on if you’re freaked out. But I like you, more than I’ve liked anyone in my life, and I’m scared but not scared enough to stop myself from asking for it, so here.” Her gaze flickers up to you, dark and coy and cagey and sweet. </p><p>You shake your head, and laugh weakly, and then you’re cupping her flushed, wet face between your palms and kissing her deep. </p><p>She opens your mouth to you for the first time, and she tastes like vodka and olives and sweetness, and you want <em>more, </em>you’ve been dreaming of this ever since she pretended she thought you were too crass, and over-acted the whole farce so spectacularly you <em>knew</em> that wasn't who she was. “I’ve been trying to take it <em>so fucking slow,” </em>you tell her  fiercely, pulling away and smoothing your hands down her slick shoulders, where your thumbs dig solidly into her arms. She’s so slim and muscular but you think it would take nothing to life her up, to carry her your bed and drop her there and reduce her to a whimpering mess. You can’t do that though, not yet. You need her to know what it’s <em>been</em> like for you. “I held back a lot. Not because I wasn't sure. I've been sure about you. But I needed to know you were sure about me.” </p><p>She chews her lips, looks up at you with wide, uncertain eyes as you touch her. Soft, gentle. Her  elbow ditches and her muscular waist and the indents where her ribcage tucks in. “Ok, fair, I don’t know how to say things, sometimes,” she admits, delicately petting your collarbones under your stained white tank top, like it’s the first time she's ever seen these tiny juts of bone up close. It’s tentative at the same time it’s deliberate. “I thought the whole ‘I don’t want this to end, please move in with me’ thing was pretty clear. Though you would for sure just. Seduce me after that. If you wanted me. But I’ll fully admit I was putting the ball in your court instead of just. I don’t know. Getting out of the shower and asking if you wanted me.” </p><p>You laugh breathlessly for a moment, hands all over her, soft and careful and everywhere, because you’re afraid if you linger you’ll grab, make fists. </p><p>“No, babygirl. You did good. You talked to me. It’s just that…it’s not so easy, for us. For lesbians like me, where everyone knows we’re lesbians,” you try and explain, stomach getting hot and tight the more you touch her. She shivers and her skin gets goosebumpy under your hands and you steer her out of the bathroom and to the bed, fingers tangled in the thick, soaked tangles of her hair. She's so fucking willing and so fucking gorgeous and you want her knees bent over your shoulders so badly, you want to hear what she sounds like when she's being licked out. The thought makes you shudder and you can feel heat and slick building between your legs, and it’s nice, that this time it’s good and not shameful. You’ve been feeling fucked up about getting wet over her, but she’s pushing her little tits into your hands, she’s tilting back up to kiss you,soft slow drags of her mouth, tongue cautious but intentional. You pull back before you get too carried away. “Girls act like you do, sometimes. And then they flip out and run away. It’s happened more than once. So I try not to hope for things.” </p><p>She sits down on the edge of the bed, arms above her head so you can see the black stubble in the dark pits of her underarms. You want to thumb over it, so you do, and it’s softer than you expect. “Ok, so I get you have no reason to think I’ll be any different,” she says, voice humming in her throat. You can feel the vibration under your lips as you gently, gently kiss down her sternum. You can feel her heart pounding, her breath coming out in shallow, desperate gasps. “But if it makes you feel any better,” she whispers, fingers sinking into your hair. “I’ve learned a lot about myself from you, and it doesn't scare me, really. It’s actually been…such a relief? I guess. To know I’m not broken. To feel safe and excited at the same time. I don’t want to run away from any of it, at all,” she explains, and you’re so suddenly so choked up, so you press your face to her stomach and inhale. “I want you to fuck me,” she says then, so evenly and certainly your own stomach plunges, tight like a fist, aching like a bruise. “And then, I want you to show me how to fuck you. I want to keep living with you. And I want to be  your girlfriend for real, if you’ll have me. And put Tajin all over your fruit every morning before training.” </p><p>“Oh <em>chica, </em>Arthie, baby,” you groan, mouth suddenly so flooded as you lick your way lower, stunned by the way she’s already gasping, the slow, decadent rolls of her body against the hotel sheets. “I’ll have you every way.” </p><p>—-</p>
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